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Uwe Schneidewind, Angelika Zahrnt

The Politics of Sufficiency

Making it easier to live the Good Life

in cooperation withValentin Zahrnt

translated from the German by Ray Cunningham


Translator’s note:

One of the defining features of post-war German politics is ‘Ordnungspolitik’, a key term in ordoliberal theory and in the operation of the ‘social market economy’. There is no universally accepted standard term for this in English. To quote a contemporary German economic theorist, it is ‘a term that can roughly be translated as “Institutional Policy” or as “Constitutional Political Economics”. The term refers to the legal and organizational means governments can use to influence the institutional framework of the economy. Within this framework, the economic actors are free to pursue their own goals.’ (Roland Kirstein, in an article entitled ‘Law and Economics in Germany’, published in 1999). In this book, I have generally translated it — and associated terms such as ‘ordnungspolitischer Rahmen’ — using variations on ‘institutional economic framework’ and ‘institutional political framework’, depending on the emphasis in the original.


7 Foreword What this book is for

11 Introduction The politics of sufficiency — Why the Good Life

is a political issue

31 Chapter I Framing — The prospects for a new institutional politics

49 Chapter II Orienting — The right measures for time and space,

property and the market

69 Chapter III Shaping — Mobility, Housing, Food: implementing policies

for the Good Life in practice


111 Chapter IV Enabling — Creating resources for sufficiency through employment, education, health and consumer policy

135 Chapter V Civil society, business, and research as agents

of the politics of sufficiency

157 Conclusion How to contribute to the politics of sufficiency

160 References and further reading163 Acknowledgements

164 About the authors


7

Foreword What this book is for

This book is intended to provoke discussion. It out-lines a new field of politics, one which today’s politicians still steer well clear of: the politics of ‘the Good Life’. What we mean by this is policies which make it easier to practise a sustainable lifestyle and thus to fulfil our global respon- sibilities at the beginning of the 21st century. We call this field ‘the politics of sufficiency’. So this is a political book.

It is at the same time a book based on scientific re-search and analysis, because the detailed configuration of our consumption habits and lifestyles is influenced by many different cultural and institutional factors. It is im-portant to understand this, and to recognise how many of the hard-won achievements of modernity – from political freedom and participation to social solidarity – are jeop-ardised by the reduction of politics to a blinkered and ex-clusive focus on the support of economic growth.

A book promoting policies to make it easier to live the Good Life must do two things. Firstly, it must demon-


8


strate that such policies are necessary; secondly, it must set out how such a policy programme is to be implemented. In other words, it has to show that the politics of suffi-ciency is feasible. It is often claimed in the wider debate that neither of these preconditions can be met. On the first, the objection is that consumption and lifestyle habits are purely individual choices, outside the domain of legitim-ate state intervention, and that politics must therefore not intrude. On the second, the argument is that a politics of sufficiency cannot be implemented in practice.

This book deals with both of these preconditions, or claims of feasibility, and with the objections to them. It demonstrates that a politics of the Good Life can be both justified and legitimated in modern free democratic societ-ies – indeed, that it is an essential condition of such soci-eties. The main section of the book sets out in detail how such a politics can be implemented, organised along four political dimensions.

At the same time, this book can only represent a be-ginning, and that is its aim – a starting-point for a broad discussion over the coming years. It is an invitation to join the debate. It is addressed to a range of very different read-ers: to people already practising lifestyles based on suffi-ciency, who want to link these with the political dimension of their lives; to activists for sustainability, in communities, in politics and in business, who are looking for ecological


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and social perspectives beyond ‘green growth’; to people in civil society organisations, in companies and in science and research, and especially to politicians, who want to make an active contribution to the creation of the political conditions for the Good Life.

This book was originally written as a contribution to the German debate on sufficiency and the Good Life. Many of the examples in this book are therefore taken from or apply to the specific German context. We have been encouraged to make this book accessible to an inter-antional audience as well, since sufficiency and the Good Life are discussed all over Europe as well as in Bhutan, in Latin and North America. The politics of sufficiency is a global programme, and we hope you will enjoy reading this book.

Angelika Zahrnt and Uwe Schneidewind,

Wuppertal/Neckargemund, June 2014


11

Introduction Why the Good Life is a political issue

‘The Good Life’: At first sight, this would seem to be a purely personal or individual concern, because in the final analysis every individual has to decide what is especially important for them in their lives – what they want to con-sume, with whom they want to live, or what their ultimate goals are.

It is the greatest achievement of liberal democratic societies that they enable a multiplicity of individual life concepts to bloom in mutual toleration, and it is right and proper for people to be sensitive to any perceived threat to this freedom. Any call for a general political framework which encompasses the free individual self-determination of our lives is perceived as just such a threat. People swiftly resort at such times to terms like ‘the compulsion state’, ‘eco-dictatorship’ or ‘neo-socialism’.

A closer look demonstrates that the opposition between the state and liberty is not as straightforward as it is often made out to be, with on the one side, the citizen


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yearning for free individual expression, and on the other, the interventionist state blocking that free expression; this view represents a failure to understand either the state or politics.

The aim of politics is to regulate how people can live together on universally acceptable and appropriate terms. Good politics means that people can live their lives as they wish without thereby restricting the life choices of others. Good politics creates the room where the Good Life can be lived.

How quickly spaces of opportunity for some can be-come restrictions on others can be seen in the example of transport policy. Car-friendly city centres with wide streets and traffic light sequencing are helpful to car drivers, but they generally disadvantage those who want to navigate the city by bike or on foot. Politics has to achieve a balance here. Good politics creates the conditions in which the greatest number of individual life concepts can be realised.

And it is here that a sense of unease has been creeping up on us all for some time. ‘Faster’, ‘global’, ‘more’, ‘com-mercialised’ – these have been the lines of development over recent decades. They were made possible by an economic policy that placed its trust in free trade and in introducing free markets into as many sectors of society as possible. This has brought us unprecedented material wealth and a previously unimagined range of products and services.


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At the same time we feel ourselves pressurised by the dynamic forces it has set free: ever more flexible work-ing times, barely manageable mountains of emails, an impossible range of product choices on the supermarket shelves. It is becoming ever more apparent that a good life needs room for that which is ‘slower’, ‘closer’, ‘less’ and ‘more personal’. This is precisely what lies behind the idea of sufficiency. We will have more to say about this in the next section.

The Good Life requires room for new balances. This means a politics which offers the possibility of self-real-isation to a variety of life concepts in a spirit of common global responsibility. This is the goal of the politics of suf-ficiency.

What’s does ‘sufficiency’ mean? Finding the way to a whole life

The term ‘sufficiency’ has its roots in the Latin word ‘sufficere’, meaning ‘to be enough’. Sufficiency is about establishing what is the right measure. It is about hav-ing enough to meet one’s needs – while thinking not only about material needs.

Wolfgang Sachs introduced the concept of sufficiency into the sustainability debate in Germany at the beginning of the 1990s. He encapsulated it in four principles, which


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he named the ‘four Es’, from the German terms he used (Entschleunigung, Entflechtung, Entrümpelung and Ent- kommerzialisierung). We have translated these principles into English as what we call the ‘four Lessens’ (with a con-scious play on ‘lessons’), which express the idea that we need to lessen our speed, our distance, the encumbrance of our acquired possessions, and the role of commerce and the market in our lives. We will consider these ‘four Lessens’ in more detail later in this book as guidelines for a politics of sufficiency.

‘Slower, less, better, finer’ – this was how Hans Glauber, the founder of the Toblach Talks, framed the idea of suf-ficiency. Sufficiency is about the quality of ‘being in the world’. About finding the right relationship to space and time, to possessions and the market. For as long as human-ity felt itself to be essentially at the mercy of the dangerous forces of nature, and was driven by poverty and hunger, then technological and economic progress offered freedom and emancipation from these compelling forces. Such pro-gress gave rise to a new quality of human life; it was what made civilisation and culture possible.

But the negative ecological, social and economic con-sequences of this successful narrative of progress are in-creasingly catching up with us. So a change of course to-wards sufficiency means correcting the balance. It is not about abandoning the impressive historical gains in pro-


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ductivity, but about a new communion of productive pro-gress and frugality.

In his book ‘The Economics of Good and Evil’ the economist Tomas Sédlacek describes the failure of mod-ern economic analysis. As human beings we can develop an unlimited number of new wants. These wants come up against a limited world – one that is constrained not only by limits to the factors of production, but also by finite natural resources. Contemporary economics aims to teach us how we can get ever more out of these limited resources. It is banking on efficiency to raise productivity and thus to increase supply and satisfy our limitless demands. And we have in truth made enormous improvements in this area: the volume of goods and services at our disposal today is incredible. But still this is a race against ourselves, involving ever more participants, which we can never win. Because satisfying existing wants stimulates the human imagination to create new ones. The race cannot be won, the finishing line always moves further away from us – and meanwhile, running our economies in the way we have until now is devastating the natural foundations of our existence.

So in order to see the full economic picture it is all the more important to consider the demand side as well. A fulfilled and fulfilling human life consists precisely in not pursuing every want, in not being cogs in the machinery of ever expanding desires. It consists in being able to con-


16


sciously choose to forego things, to defer things, to enjoy what is already there and to cultivate our relationship with the world as it is – rather than always demanding some-thing new. These are all virtues that contribute to a fulfilled and fulfilling human life. Sufficiency and efficiency belong inseparably together. It is about time economic theory re-discovered this.

In this context, the sociologist Hartmut Rosa emphas-ises the significance of resonance experiences. Experiencing oneself as connected to the world, to nature, and especially to other people, is a fundamental element of a good life. Modern societies, with their hectic rush, their overwhelm-ing mass of stimuli and their commercialisation of so many areas of our lives, make such resonance experiences ever rarer. This becomes particularly apparent in the sterile at-mosphere of shopping centres, airports and many of the pedestrianised precincts of big cities. It is hardly possible for an authentic connection to our shared natural and so-cial world to arise in such an environment, radically insu-lated as it is from time and space and with a universally interchangeable array of shops and goods. The politics of sufficiency is therefore one which would improve the pre-conditions for resonance experiences and make the Good Life easier.


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Why sufficiency is a social issue as well – sustainability policy beyond the efficiency revolution

But it is not only at the individual level that sufficiency plays an important role in the achievement of the Good Life. The global challenge that sustainable development poses to society at large will not be overcome without suf-ficiency. Sustainable development means development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Since the Brundtland report of 1987, the concept of sustainable development has been used to combine the environmental and the development agendas. It is about striking a fair balance between the countries of the global North and South and simultaneously about the long-term protection of resources and the environment. It will hardly be possible to achieve both. This is particularly graphically illustrated by the climate issue: the prosperity enjoyed by the industri-alised world over the last decades was made possible only by massive use of fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas. So the huge increase in CO2 emissions into the atmosphere can be put down to how the economy works in those countries. Every US American emits around 20 tonnes of CO2 every year; every German around 10; an Indian or African, by contrast, just a tonne.

However, the ecological consequences of the very sub-stantial rise in green house gas emissions impact mainly


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on the poorest countries, those that cannot protect them-selves: increasingly frequent extreme weather events such as hurricanes, floods or droughts strike countries like Bangladesh, Vietnam or Haiti – countries that bear hardly any responsibility at all for the rise in CO2 emissions.

At the same time the poorer countries insist on their right to an economic development comparable to that en-joyed by the industrialised countries. Many of the emerging economic powers, with China in the lead, have already made impressive progress in catching up – including in terms of the associated CO2 emissions. Thus, China now has a figure of over five tonnes of CO2 per capita, and – because of its larger population – has overtaken the USA as the world’s biggest producer of CO2.

For a long time, the search for solutions to this problem met with an answer along these lines: we need to decouple negative environmental impacts from economic activity by increasing eco-efficiency. This concept denotes production processes and products which achieve equal or even better economic performance with much smaller environmental impact. The key to this is technological innovation. And there have been substantial successes in this area in re-cent years: modern car engines are far more efficient than the models of the 1990s, and the energy needs for many chemical production processes have been sharply reduced. All this produces the nice illusion that, because new green


19


technologies quickly turn into important export winners, ecology and classical economics can be successfully com-bined without difficulty. This is the Green Economy – the great hope.

Current studies indicate that it has indeed been pos-sible to achieve substantial relative decoupling in many fields, so that environmental impact per product unit was reduced. However, these relative savings were then more than cancelled out by a simultaneous growth in product volume or by increased product turnover. The consequence is that absolute environmental damage continued to grow – even where global tolerance limits have already long been exceeded, for example with respect to climate change. Thus, rather than decreasing, global CO2 emissions have increased by 20 percent since the major conference on sus-tainability in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 – and this despite the huge technological progress of the last 20 years.

And this increase is linked to the efficiency gains made, because eco-efficient engines and production processes re-duce not only environmental impact but cost: that is, they are not just ecological, they are also economical. The eco-nomic savings are an incentive to increase production or expand the range of fittings and accessories. That is why the latest sequel to the VW Beetle, launched in 2013, not only has a much more efficient engine than the 1960s model but also far more and better equipment fitted as


20


standard, and is therefore heavier and has far more motor-ised parts. The end result is that the fuel requirements per 100 kilometres travelled are very similar for both models, even though there is a 50-year gap between them. This is an example of the inbuilt growth stimulus of efficiency gains – what economists call the “rebound effect”. This effect takes many forms, and it is an important factor in explaining why efficiency alone cannot solve the challenges of sustainable development.

Sufficiency is therefore an important tool for dealing with the challenge of sustainable development. Instead of relying on technological innovation alone, sufficiency enables social innovations. Sufficiency creates prosperity with less use of nature and materials.

From the perspective of sustainable development, it is a notable advantage of sufficiency that under favour-able conditions it can be implemented far faster than new technologies can be developed. New technologies have to be conceived, tested, improved and brought to market in a complex and expensive process. This can take years or even decades. But – particularly in the field of climate change – time is pressing. That is why it is important to come up with approaches that will have an impact straight away. The energy saving initiative Setsuden, introduced in Japan following the Fukushima catastrophe, shows how this can be done. The reductions needed in electricity use


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were very quickly achieved. Energy savings of around 15 to 20 percent were made without appreciable cuts in sup-ply: for example, lighting has been used more sparingly and conscientiously since then, and in Japanese offices workers have adjusted their dress code to the temperature rather than switching on the air conditioning. In Germany, the Federal Environment Agency has calculated that the introduction of a national upper speed limit of 100 km/h (about 62 mph) would deliver an immediate fuel use re-duction of some five percent.

In matters of sufficiency, we can all learn from each other as global equals. For unlike technological innova-tions, which need competitive industrial sectors and a sophisticated research and development system, suffi-ciency innovations can originate anywhere. Just as we can learn from India’s vegetarian culture, we can also take les-sons from Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Index or from the cycling culture of Copenhagen, where today it is perfectly normal for people to travel to work by bike, and where over one-third of all traffic journeys are made by bike.

The politics of sufficiency creates a framework within which both social innovation and new forms of techno-logical innovation are possible. It extends existing in-novation policy in order to create the foundations for a civilisation capable of allowing the full breadth of human


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potential to unfold and of living up to its responsibility for sustainable development.

The politics of sufficiency as a contribution to an enlightened liberalism

Does the politics of sufficiency encroach on the free-dom of the individual? Those who advocate a more sup-portive framework for sufficiency are quickly accused of being authoritarian. A closer look at the core of what liberalism means may be of some help here; it will soon reveal that such accusations arise out of a very narrow un-derstanding of ‘liberalism’.

If the members of any society are regarded only as consumers, then liberalism becomes no more than a pure liberalism of consumption: everyone can buy and consume what, where and how they like – from long-haul flights and gas-guzzling cars to jet skiing on holiday. From the perspective of true freedom, this sort of ‘free’ consumption by ‘free’ citizens soon reveals a number of hidden prob-lems. Firstly, it is open only to those with the financial means to afford this kind of consumption. Secondly, the free exercise of the right to consume immediately reduces the rights of others who suffer from its impact on their own freedom and self-development. For example, the cyc-lists who no longer feel safe in traffic because of the num-


23


ber of oversized cars on the road; or the sunbathers and swimmers in search of relaxation who feel annoyed and endangered by jet ski riders; or those living under airport flight paths and suffering from noise pollution. Nor does this take into account the rights of all those people around the world suffering the consequences of climate change and the other forms of environmental damage wrought by our consumption.

This is why the German constitution (known as the ‘Basic Law’) contains paragraph 14.2, which stipulates that ‘property entails obligations’. The exercise of freedom always comes up against limits at the point where it re-stricts the freedoms of others. It is precisely in order to strike a balance in this regard that a political framework is needed. A properly liberal politics therefore has regard to the individual not just as consumer but also as legal citizen. Enlightened liberalism aims to provide all citizens with the maximum opportunity for individual personal development. It is about tolerance towards a variety of different lifestyles existing side by side. As a rule, lifestyles based on sufficiency are minimally invasive: that is, they barely impinge on others in the realisation of their own life choices. A politics that makes a sufficient life easier is therefore at heart a liberal politics. It opens the prospect of a multiplicity of lifestyles co-existing in global responsibility.


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The politics of sufficiency, as a politics of enabling, pays full and proper regard to all citizens, and to the whole citizen. It weighs up conflicting interests, and debates the alternative development paths and the possibilities for co-existence of different lifestyles. That is why the politics of sufficiency is also highly participatory – as the following section will show.

The essential elements of the politics of sufficiency

The preceding sections demonstrated the potential be-nefits of a political approach that opens up more space for sufficiency – both as an extension of the possibilities for individual personal development and as a contribution to dealing with the challenges of sustainable development.

A politics of sufficiency would create a framework for actions and lifestyles which could spread not only across one country but around the globe. It is the logical exten-sion and continuation of the social market economy; that is, it represents an institutional policy which brings in-dividual personal development and social and ecological concerns into a new balance.

But how would it function in practice? How exactly can politics create conditions which ‘make it easier to live the Good Life’? What are the defining characteristics of a politics of sufficiency?


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Cross-cutting politics. Sufficiency politics extends into many policy fields – into consumer and transport policy, but equally into housing policy, planning policy, health and social policy. It can be applied in local government just as well as in regional, national and European govern-ment. It can affect our lives at different levels, addressing both fundamental institutional elements of our economic activity and detailed and specialised policy areas. On the one hand this is a challenge, because it means that suffi-ciency policy cannot simply be delegated to an existing department; on the other hand it is a big opportunity, as it means that sufficiency policy can be introduced at, and can develop momentum from, numerous different starting points.

Similar considerations apply to other policy fields: health policy, gender equality policy or policies on demo-graphic change are all confronted with the same challenges. But it has proved possible to establish these as overarching issues and to create institutions and offices responsible for the implementation of cross-cutting policies. Sufficiency policy can draw inspiration and learn from the experience gained in these fields.

Multi-level politics. Creating the framework conditions in which it is easier to live the Good Life is just as possible at the international or national level as it is regionally or locally. Sufficiency policy can gain a foothold at any of


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these levels. So it is equally appropriate as a topic for the town council as it is for regional or national government. Initiatives at these different levels complement each other, and their reciprocal interaction reinforces the framework for the Good Life, so they must be considered in relation to each other.

Experimental politics. Traditional business and technology policy, and social policy as well, are well-established policy fields, in which complex institutions and political arrange-ments have evolved over decades. Sufficiency policy is a new political approach. It can make use of existing institu-tions, but it will also be dependent in part on entirely new forms and formations. So the path to a politics of suffi-ciency will be one opened by trial and error. What will be needed is a highly sensitive weighing up of different pos-sibilities for personal development and personal freedom. This requires creative energy, but also a readiness to learn from one’s mistakes and to allow the politics of sufficiency to grow organically.

Participatory politics. The experimental character of suf-ficiency-oriented politics – but even more the fact that it is about enabling the Good Life – means that it is essen-tial for it to be created through a participatory process. Citizens must be able to participate in the discussion and


27


design of a legal and regulatory framework that would make possible a varied and fulfilling life for the greatest possible number.

Sufficiency-oriented politics therefore stands for: (1) an enlightened liberalism, one that also offers a fair

chance of fulfilment to sustainable life choices,(2) an institutional policy based on the goal of prosper-

ity – that is, one that takes into account the entire range of factors of prosperity, and not just economic growth,

(3) a perspective of cultural optimism, one that empow- ers politics, civil society and business to turn new values into political and economic reality,

(4) policy development that is informed by social sci-ence and understands that individual actions are always embedded in institutional and social contexts.

The politics of sufficiency – an approach along four dimensions

In the chapters which follow, this book will present four detailed approaches towards a politics based on suf-fiency (see also the figure on p. 159). The intention is to take forward a debate which might in the future lead to sufficiency becoming an established and central concern of politics:


28


Framing – the prospects for a new institutional politics. The concept of sufficiency-oriented politics is an extension and development of the market economy. It is about having an institutional framework for economic activity which is constructed not just with the national social settle-ment in mind but with global social justice as well. So in the first place, sufficiency politics is institutional politics which creates a framework supporting the objective of the Good Life. This includes, for example, new measures of prosperity for the national economy – because gross do-mestic product (GDP) is an increasingly poor indicator of what constitutes genuine prosperity in a society. It is about having competition rules and a fiscal policy which ensure that common or collective goods – the commons – are not depleted; or at least that the user pays for their depletion. Framework policy takes responsibility for infrastructure that enables a good life for all, from cycle lanes in cities to easily accessible recreation areas. Finally, policies for social justice and for redistribution are an important ele-ment of a framework policy for the Good Life, because prosperity in modern societies is driven to a much greater degree by relative equality and justice than by the abso-lute level of GDP. Recent research has demonstrated this impressively.


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Orienting – the right measures for time and space, property and

the market. Political approaches which provide orientation are a second pathway for sufficiency policy. They address the characteristic tendencies of modern societies: acceler-ation, globalisation, quantitative growth, commercialisa-tion. These tendencies have structural causes. So on the one hand sufficiency politics has to address the structural causes; on the other hand, it requires policies which offer contrasting points of orientation, which demonstrate an awareness of the values of deceleration, localisation and the search for the right measure. Such political approaches also serve to raise consciousness: they point the way for the kind of development that is needed for the future, and thereby provide support for the simultaneous approach via the other political pathways described here.

Shaping – mobility, housing, food. Good Life policies apply to specific fields of human activity: transport policy, plan-ning and housing policy, or food and agriculture policy. These are policy fields that offer great scope for the pro-motion of sufficiency. The great advantage of using this way in is that these are established policy spheres with dedicated departments at at all levels of government. So sufficiency policies can be hooked on to existing policy instruments to extend them in new directions and in-tegrate them across different departments. Moreover, it


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means that a healthy competition for effective sufficiency policies can arise between different countries, regions and municipalities – which presents an opportunity to develop a political culture of experimentation.

Enabling – creating resources for sufficiency through employ-

ment, education, health and consumer policy. Good Life policies benefit greatly from being flanked by complementary ap-proaches in other policy fields: education policy, employ-ment (and working time) policy, and appropriate con-sumer and health policies. In these fields, too, the foundations and the skills for the Good Life are being and will be created. The further these ‘resources’ for the Good Life can be developed, the easier it will be to live a life based on sufficiency.


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Chapter I Framing – The prospects for a new institutional politics

How we organise our economy has a decisive influ-ence on how much prosperity is produced in a society. Since the end of the Second World War, the ‘social market economy’ has proved a successful model of modern eco-nomic organisation. It encouraged personal initiative and the dynamism of the markets and at the same time ensured social equity and security. It brought Germany and other parts of Europe unprecedented prosperity. The German economic miracle was secured by continuous economic growth. This was essential to creating the political space for the improvement of social equity

This model first began to falter in the 1970s. The oil crisis sharpened the dawning perception that the growth experienced over the first 30 post-war years could not continue. The scope for social redistribution was dimin-ishing. From then onwards, inflationary policy and later


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public debt became the means of continuing the pursuit of social equity while growth rates declined.

The spread and acceleration of globalisation over sub-sequent years removed the option of requiring the owners of capital assets, via taxation, to pay for the continued pursuit of social equity. For in the liberalised global eco-nomy, it was capital which turned out to be the most mo-bile of the factors of production. The balance between the interests of ‘democracy’ – in the sense of all citizens having a fair share in a society’s prosperity – and ‘capital-ism’ – in the sense of protecting the interests of capital so as to ensure adequate investment – tilted increasingly to-wards capital. The state, too, made increasing concessions to capital. Since then, income from capital has been rising much faster than income from wages.

This is why Wolfgang Streeck, the Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, speaks provocatively of a ‘deferred crisis of democratic capital-ism’. He makes it clear that democracy and capitalism are not always and necessarily a harmonious partnership. The world today offers many examples of how a capital-ist economic system can co-exist with an extremely un-democratic political regime. This suggests that the balance between democratic politics and the economic creation of sufficient levels of prosperity must be continually re-estab-lished and re-aligned. The social market economy model


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was an example of just such a successful alignment. It is an institutional framework that we need to maintain and develop.

The reason why this has a lot to do with sufficiency is that since the 1970s a new phenomenon has been ob-served: beyond a certain income threshold, further eco-nomic growth does not seem to lead to an appreciable rise in happiness. This phenomenon was investigated for the first time by the American economist Richard Easterlin in a famous essay from 1974. He showed that the American population was barely becoming happier in spite of sub-stantial increases in national income. Many further stud-ies since the 1970s have confirmed this phenomenon, now called the ‘Easterlin paradox’. Beyond a certain income threshold, happiness and quality of life are influenced far more by other factors than by rising national income.

This has important implications for a sustainable prosperity policy. Rather than being focused only on the institutional framework supporting economic growth, such a policy needs to take account of the whole range of factors affecting prosperity within a national economy. In practice this means extending the social market economy.

Work is now being carried out on these very issues at an international level. It is interesting to note that it is the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and De-velopment (OECD) which is taking the lead. This is an


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organisation of over 30 leading European, American and selected Asian states together with Australia, all of which are committed to democracy and the market economy. The OECD provides comprehensive statistical analysis of the international economy in order to support policy in its member states. So for some time now it has also been interested in the factors affecting ‘human well-being’ in those countries and also in the question of the extent to which these factors are linked to the growth of GDP. These questions are being addressed in the OECD’s ‘Bet-ter Life Initiative’, which is concerned with ‘better policies for better lives’.

The insights from these analyses are very interesting. The OECD identifies eleven factors of central importance for our well-being:

– income and wealth,– jobs and earnings,– housing conditions,– health status,– work-life balance,– education and skills,– social connections,– civic engagement and governance,– environmental quality,– personal security,– subjective well-being.


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Three of these factors are of a direct material nature and are therefore closely linked to the level of gross domestic product (GDP): income, jobs, and housing conditions. The eight other factors turn out to be much more loosely linked to GDP, and some are completely independent of it. This also explains why, for example, in some countries with re-latively low per capita GDP, life satisfaction levels are as high as or even higher than in countries with much higher per capita GDP. Empirical evidence shows that it is pos-sible to achieve very high life satisfaction scores at a per capita GDP level of (or purchasing power parity equival-ent to) around 10,000 euros, because this is the threshold beyond which it is possible for all important basic material needs (such as housing, food, education, health and mobil-ity) to be satisfied.

The health system in the USA illustrates starkly how large a gap can develop between the well-being and the material wealth of a country. It is the best-funded health system in the world. Per head of population, Americans pay twice as much for their health system than the OECD aver-age. Despite this, around 50 million US Americans have no health insurance and practically no access to health care – with serious consequences for their health status. This ex-ample shows that higher GDP does not automatically en-sure higher quality of life if the institutional framework is faulty.


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It is precisely this question which forms the topic of this chapter: what kind of institutional framework is needed to guarantee a good life for the majority of the people even when GDP is rising only slightly or not at all?

New measures of prosperity – orienting our politics correctly

Knowing your ultimate goals is of central import-ance for every political movement. It is those goals which provide your compass direction – which in turn determines the shaping of the institutional framework. The orienta-tion over recent decades was clear: it was given by eco-nomic growth – as measured by GDP. This guiding meas-ure has embedded itself deep in the collective political and social consciousness. Every new growth forecast is awaited anxiously; all the party manifestos are full of new policy initiatives for growth.

Notwithstanding methodological criticisms of various kinds, the use of GDP as a guide was sensible enough; cer-tainly for as long as quality of life was closely linked to rising GDP. But this is becoming less and less true, as we saw above. It is perfectly possible for GDP to be rising at the same time as people’s quality of life is hardly changing on average, or even declining.

Politics is therefore in need of new guiding measures.


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From 2011 – 2013 the German Bundestag conducted a Study Commission (or ‘Enquête Commission’) on this issue, with the title ‘Growth, Well-being and Quality of Life’. One of its most important tasks was that of propos-ing an alternative political indicator for the future meas-urement of prosperity. Unfortunately, it failed in this task. It proposed merely to set alongside GDP nine additional economic, social and ecological indicators. This creates another broad set of indicators to add to the numerous similar sets already circulating in the political and wider debate around sustainability. But in view of the large num-ber of indicators used in this new set from the Enquête Commission, it can hardly be expected to replace GDP as the dominant indicator and guide for the future direction of politics.

The debate within the Commission unfortunately paid too little attention to the international discussion, where the search for alternative guiding measures for a future politics of prosperity has already advanced a great deal further. And this applies not only to the OECD, with its nuanced analysis of contributory factors to social prosperity.

Some Canadian and US American federal states, such as Maryland, are working with an aggregate alternative indicator for the measurement of prosperity – the Genu-ine Progress Indicator (GPI). This measures ‘real’ progress


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by including work in sectors (such as the household and family) that had not been reflected in GDP before. In par-ticular, though, it filters out items which may increase GDP but which do not indicate genuine progress (amongst other things: the costs of dealing with environmental damage, the costs of criminal activity, accidents or traffic jams, etc.). The results of such a calculation are striking: despite a substantial increase in GDP per capita over the same period, GPI per capita has barely risen in Maryland since 1960. A substantial proportion of the economic growth over that time has been swallowed up by the compensatory or follow-up costs of social and ecological damage.

In Germany, Hans Diefenbacher and Roland Zieschank have created a similar index, the Nationaler Wohlfahrtsin-dex (National Welfare Index, NWI). This similarly adjusts the standard domestic product measure for excluded con-tributions to welfare and for the follow-up costs of eco-logically and socially damaging activities which currently find their way into GDP as if they represented positive con-tributions. Diefenbacher and Zieschank also take income distribution into account in their index. For when an ad-dition to the GDP is shared only among a small number of people, on account of unequal income distribution, then the impact on overall welfare is far smaller than when a large number benefit. Here, too, the results are surprising. In 2011 the NWI was calculated for the German Land of


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Schleswig-Holstein for the period 1999 – 2008. Over that time, GDP in Schleswig-Holstein increased by only 0.2 percent, whereas the NWI rose by 9.4 percent. The trend at national level went in the opposite direction: there, GDP over the same period rose by 7.4 percent while the NWI fell by 3.2 percent. Better environmental quality and greater social equality in Schleswig-Holstein meant that the quality of life there rose by more than the national average.

These examples alone are enough to demonstrate clearly how significant a step it would be if national and regional governments were to use an alternative measure of prosperity by which to orient their political programmes, or if their success or failure were to be judged on whether the national or regional welfare index, rather than GDP, had risen over their term of office. Individual cities, too, could use a welfare indicator of this kind as their political compass. This would make possible a genuine political re-orientation – a serious consideration of those factors that affect and can increase the level of prosperity in a society beyond what is measured by GDP.

This can hardly be achieved simply by employing a broader set of indicators – as is shown by the experience of the Federal German government with the use of sustain-ability indicators, which are barely registered either by the wider public or by the relevant political bodies. However,


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a new guiding measure in and of itself does nothing to change the structural dependency of modern economies on growth. But it does create a solid platform from which to address these issues.

The extent of the reorientation made possible by a consistent change to a different indicator has been shown by the small country of Bhutan. For a number of years now Bhutan has been using a ‘Gross National Happiness’ index (GNH) as its political guiding measure. The GNH measures prosperity along seven dimensions which are subsequently aggregated:

– Economic Wellness,– Ecological Wellness,– Physical Wellness,– Mental Wellness,– Workplace Wellness,– Social Wellness and– Political Wellness. These dimensions are similar to the eleven determin-

ant factors identified by the OECD. The use of GNH as a compass in Bhutan has led to a completely different kind of prosperity policy, one which places far more emphasis on health, education and social conviviality, and which involves the intensive participation of the population in policy making.


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Examples such as these demonstrate – notwithstand-ing all regionally specific conditions and challenges – that it is possible to develop guiding measures for the Good Life beyond increases in GDP. So a political programme to ‘make it easier to live the Good Life’ has to use guiding measures that capture the determinant factors of the Good Life in all its dimensions.

Institutional politics and competition policy to protect the commons

The founding fathers of the social market economy knew that the market could develop to its full poten-tial only if its foundations were protected and secured. Without a guarantee of genuine competition, without so-cial harmony and social justice, it is impossible to main-tain a sustainable, functioning market and social order. All of these, however, are factors which markets may need in order to function but which are not reproduced by the markets themselves; because from the perspective of the individual market participant it is always rational to un-dermine these foundations in order to maximise one’s own economic benefits.

This is why it is necessary to have an institutional framework for the steering of the economy. And this is why, for example, social security systems and robust em-


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ployees’ rights developed within the social market eco-nomy. These are collective social goods that enable a prop-erly functioning and fair market economy.

For at least 20 years now it has been becoming ever more apparent that a national framework system consist-ing solely of direct social protection measures for employ-ees is neither appropriate nor adequate. It is only rarely the case today that this system is circumvented for the purpose of increasing the returns to capital. Rather, the exploitation of collective goods has been relocated, so-cially as well as ecologically. Globalisation has meant that social exploitation now takes place in other parts of the world. The tragedies of the textile workers in Bangladesh dramatically demonstrated this. But massive ecological ex-ploitation, in particular, is now also taking place: a large proportion of our wealth is based on resource depletion and environmental destruction, which are not paid for by the companies or consumers who profit. We derive great benefit today from raw materials like oil, gas, coal and palm oil which are priced far too low. The massive envir-onmental consequences, in the form of water pollution, climate change and devastating biodiversity loss, have to be borne by coming generations and by people on the other side of the world.

The economist Gerhard Scherhorn describes this as a new form of ‘unfair business practices’. Companies ex-


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ploiting these supposedly ‘free’ resources derive a competitive advantage over those that observe the duty to pre-serve the commons. He therefore proposes – basing his argument on Articles 14.2 (‘property entails obligations’) and 20a (‘the state shall protect the natural foundations of life’) of the German constitution – that the law against unfair business practices in Germany should be extended accordingly. The depletion of common goods without ad-equate compensation should be treated as an infringement of this law. This proposal demonstrates the scope for an institutional approach to the protection of common goods that are central to the Good Life.

A form of institutional politics which is both more ob-vious and easier to implement involves ensuring that the value and the consequential costs of common goods are reflected in their prices. Ecological tax reforms and emis-sions rights capped at ecologically defensible levels are appropriate instruments for such an approach. They make the use of environmental resources more expensive and thus increase the incentives for arranging our economic life in a way that preserves its essential ecological founda-tions.

This is very important for the encouragement of ways of life based on sufficiency, as it makes lifestyles with low energy and resource requirements more economically at-tractive.


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Creating an infrastructure that supports sufficiency

Many of the factors of the Good Life are dependent on infrastructure: traffic systems that encourage cycling and walking, parks, swimming pools and green spaces for rest and recreation, education and health facilities are just some examples. The more infrastructure of this kind is available to people, the easier it is to live a good life even on a low income. The fewer such public infrastructural facilities there are, the more a good life depends on high income levels, because people who earn a lot can afford to live in the country and commute to work every day, to have their own pool, and to pay for the provision of a wide range of educational and vocational options for their children.

So infrastructure policy is an important element of an institutional framework that supports sufficiency. A lot of what is involved in this takes place at a local level. Good town planning can achieve a lot in terms of creating a healthy, ecologically sound urban environment suitable for all age groups. The transformation of traffic-choked town centres into pedestrian zones from the 1970s on-wards demonstrated for the first time how infrastructural changes directly affected the quality of life (see also the section ‘Housing’ on page 71).

Interesting possibilities often arise from having an in-novative framework within which to undertake infrastruc-


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tural renovation. A good example is the ‘renaturing’ of the Emscher river in the northern Ruhr valley in Germany. From the middle of the 19th century onwards, due to in-tensive coal mining and industrialisation, the river had be-come an industrial drainage channel for the entire Ruhr district. At the beginning of the 1990s a wide-ranging renaturing was set in train. The success of the project can be seen today. The Emscher cycle path and the Emscher park have become popular places to relax and unwind. The quality of life for local residents has been markedly improved, and this has contributed to a regional economic boom. The Emscher renovation is a good example of how infrastructural renovation can become part of a policy based on improving the quality of life.

In waterside towns and cities the ‘urban blue’, that is, the city waterways and waterfronts, is increasingly being rediscovered as an important element of urban infrastruc-ture. Internationally, Copenhagen is in the vanguard of this movement, just as it was with the promotion of cycling. Copenhagen harbour, in the centre of the city, was long used only as part of the transport infrastructure; the idea of swimming in its filthy waters would not have entered anybody’s mind. This situation has been turned around in recent years by means of a thoroughgoing policy pro-gramme for the revitalisation of the city and surrounding region. Today this area includes among other things three


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harbour swimming pools. The city centre harbour is now an important location for recreation and other activities contributing to the quality of life.

Towards a distribution policy that encourages sufficiency

‘The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better’ is the title of a book published in 2009 by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. In it, the two epidemiologists examined a series of indices of social wel-fare, for example life expectancy, health status, the incid-ence of obesity, mental health, educational performance, the rate of violence, the prison population, teenage preg-nancy rates, and many more. They then examined what these values were most closely associated with. Their hy-pothesis had been that higher material wealth would be very closely related with positive values of these indices. Interestingly, this turned out not to be the case. The closest association was instead with the rate of inequality in a society: the more unequal the distribution of income and wealth in a country, the worse the levels of health, per-sonal safety and educational opportunity. A political pro-gramme with social justice and a fair distribution as its goals is therefore an important framing element for a good life for all.


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An interesting scientific experiment has been carried out on this issue. When asked which of two societies they would prefer to live in – one in which they themselves would have an annual income of 50,000 euros while the average income was 25,000, or one in which their own income would be 100,000 euros whereas the average was 200,000 – the vast majority of those asked chose the first alternative. Above a certain income threshold, the relation between one’s own income and that of the rest of the soci-ety is much more important for life satisfaction than the absolute level of income.

These findings turn the received wisdom on distribu-tional politics on its head. Politicians believed for a long time that greater fairness in income distribution could only be brought about by more growth – for then there would be more available to be shared out. Instead, the opposite happened. More growth led to more inequality, and as a result to more dissatisfaction. So for the Good Life it is important to back policies for fairness rather than policies for growth.

Here, too, fiscal policy provides a good starting-point. Gerhard Scherhorn makes clear how distributional in-equality today is being increased particularly by capital-ism’s inherent tendency towards the creation of monopol-ies, which is undermining the market economy. This could be counteracted firstly by the taxation of monopoly rents


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and their transformation into a basic income related to needs, accompanied by the removal of externalities. For example, the taxation of ground rents could put an end to land grabbing (the large-scale acquisition of land in devel-oping countries by international actors). In international climate negotiations, it has now also been recognised by national finance ministries that a carbon tax – in economic terms the removal of an externality – is a potential source of tax revenue, one that provides an answer to the problem of capital flight and capital tax avoidance. Secondly, Scherhorn proposes replacing taxes on income and wages with a progressive consumption tax, a fiscal policy instru-ment which tends to encourage sufficiency and fairer dis-tribution.


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Chapter II Orienting – The right measures for time and space, property and the market

Our society is characterised by a self-fulfilling expecta-tion of escalation. The mantra of ‘further, faster, more’ knows only one direction, whether in the growth of GDP or the growth of personal living space. This escalation becomes life-threatening when it raises the rate of use of energy, resources and land above what human beings or the planet can tolerate. We in the industrialised world have grasped, in theory, that we need a programme of reduction (of 80 – 90 percent in the demand for resources), but yet we want to hold on to our programme of escalation. So we keep inventing new labels to mask our self-contradictory behaviour – such as ‘green’ growth or ‘inclusive’ growth. But our balancing act looks increasingly likely to end in us doing the splits.


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With this book we want to plead for a replacement of the escalation expectation with something else – with the right measures for time and space, for property and the market. That will – not always, but often – mean ‘less’: that is, having less and doing less. But it will also some-times mean ‘different’, sometimes ‘better’, and sometimes ‘finer’. Wolfgang Sachs’s ‘four Lessens’ can serve as our guidelines in the search for the right measures and for strategies for sufficiency. With them, Sachs mapped out early on, along four dimensions, a new pathway for good living:

– in time: ‘less speed’, meaning more slowly and more reliably,

– in space: ‘less distance’, meaning closer and clearer – in the material world: ‘less clutter’, meaning simpler

and fewer – in the economy: ‘less market’, meaning providing

and making for oneself.

The ‘four Lessens’ are good starting-points for reflec-tion and for making changes in one’s own lifestyle. In the following section we hope to make clear that they can also function as guidelines for political strategies for sufficiency along the different dimensions.

A politics oriented in this way, taking the ‘four Lessens’ as its compass, is symbolic politics, in a good sense. It


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demonstrates that a different configuration of the Good Life beyond the expectation of linear escalation is possible, and that politics can support the realisation of such altern-ative ways of living. It can help to spread a culture based on different measures of time and space and different lifestyle priorities, involving fewer things and fewer commodities, and to demonstrate that such a culture is equally valid and has an equal right to be supported by the common institu-tional framework.

It is interesting in this context to note what Lud-wig Erhard (Federal Chancellor of Germany in the early 1960s, and regarded as one of the founders of the social market economy) wrote in a 1957 book, published in Germany under the title ‘Prosperity for All’ (‘Wohlstand für Alle’): ‘We shall certainly arrive at a point when, quite rightly, the question will be put whether it is still right and useful to produce still more goods, to increase material prosperity, or whether it would not be more sensible, in forgoing such “progress”, to gain more leis-ure, more time for thought, and more rest.’ And later in the same book: ‘… then eventually we shall have to correct our present economic policy. No one must then be so dogmatic as to continue to regard further expansion as a benefit for all.’ Erhard’s careful reflection was unable to make itself properly heard during the 1950s and 1960s. Today his thoughts from that period seem highly topical.


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The following sections will show that political orient-ation plays a role in the other approaches to the politics of the Good Life. It helps us to see the framework in a different perspective. ‘Less speed’, for example, can ap-ply equally to a default speed limit of 30 km/h (around 19 mph) in urban areas and to five-year warranties on consumer durables.

The ‘four Lessens’ are also important guidelines for the supportive policies that enable us to live a good life. So for example it is important to learn how to handle rhythms, to learn how to alternate moderation and expansion, or how to develop an instinct in tune with our immediate environment.

The ‘four Lessens’ overlap at certain points. For ex-ample, less speed in the production of new models is at the same time a measure that prevents the accumulation of outdated products and in that sense helps to create less clutter. Producing things that can be repaired represents a contribution to localisation, because it is within the local region that repairs are carried out. Making things for one-self contributes equally to less market, less distance and less clutter, as self-made items are used for longer. It is in their interplay that the politics of the ‘four Lessens’ creates a culture of the Good Life.


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Chapter II Orienting – The right measures for time and space, property and the market Chapter II Orienting – The right measures for time and space, property and the market

Less speed – doing politics at the right tempo

“What defines the Good Life for you?” “More time!” – is very often the first answer. We

have been living for many years now not in an epoch of material scarcity but one of time scarcity. Economic life is geared to speed: bringing your innovation to market ahead of the competition; scooping the other papers with the latest news item; exploiting early inside knowledge on the stock markets; and above all – never, ever missing an important new email in your inbox. All this is familiar to us from our daily working lives, and increasing numbers of people simply carry this stress straight over into their private lives.

A political programme to make it easier to live the Good Life must create a framework within which it will once again be easier to live life at a flexible tempo. Such an approach to time is a cross-cutting policy. It applies to all areas of life and at different political levels. In what follows, we want to examine more closely three aspects of temporal policy:

– support for less speed in everyday life,– promoting longer product life,– new policies on working and leisure time.

Less speed in everyday life. We experience acceleration in many areas of our daily lives – when on the move, when


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eating, even on holiday. That’s why initiatives like ‘Slow Food’ and ‘Slow Travel’ have won such support in recent years. Time policy can support a deceleration. There is great potential here, especially in the field of transport: lower speed limits on motorways and on residential streets, or traffic management that favours cyclists, pe- destrians and public transport, can create new mobility tempos.

Longer product life. Acceleration is affecting the quality of our products. Poor workmanship, planned obsoles-cence, new product cycles with a timespan measured in months – all this is part of our everyday experience today. But the experience of durability is a central element of our sense of time. Politics can provide support for this: extend-ing warranty periods, introducing stricter product liability regulations, or compulsory repairability for products, are all important tools for this job. Second-hand markets can be supported by means of tax breaks on trades with used goods or community exchange systems for building ma-terials. In these examples, policies to promote less clutter and less speed work hand in hand.

Work-life balance policies. Time prosperity requires espe-cially time for oneself, so that one can devote oneself to things beyond the pressure to earn money and to make a career. It is very difficult for people today to escape these


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time pressures. Time policy aims to make it easier to live a time-autonomous life. This is a challenge for employers and unions. Pathways to a new time prosperity include op-tions for part-time working, working time accounts and sabbaticals. Politics can support such developments by strengthening employee rights.

Less distance – a life rooted in the region

The global division of labour is a significant factor in the drive for escalation and growth in modern societies. It is this which has made possible such a vast range of products at such cheap prices. Global markets and labour differentiation enable enormous production quantities and the associated ‘economies of scale’ (savings in unit pro-duction costs). Globalisation also offers the opportunity to produce in those locations where labour, resources and en-ergy are cheapest. On the one hand, the division of labour is a blessing, because without it, it would not be possible for so many people to live in hitherto unknown material prosperity. But on the other hand it is a curse, because it offers a permanent incentive for poor working condi-tions in other parts of the world and for the exploitation of ecological resources. In addition, it de-personalises our relationship to things: we are increasingly surrounded by globally produced and universally interchangeable goods.


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A pedestrian shopping precinct in Düsseldorf today is barely distinguishable from one in Boston, Beijing or Melbourne. Regional and cultural identity is being lost.

The more our material needs are satisfied, the more we need to think about whether the time has come for a re-balancing between global and regional wealth creation. Creating wealth at the regional level can certainly be more expensive than doing so globally; but it builds other forms of value which are often of much greater importance for our sense of well-being today. Niko Paech has highlighted some of the particular advantages of regional wealth cre-ation:

– the transparency that comes with knowing where the products we use come from and knowing what goes into them,

– empathy and social embeddedness – that is, produ-cers who have ties to the regions where their products are sold and who are socially engaged there,

– a congruence between the interests of investors and entrepreneurs, which arises when the finance for regional enterprises comes from within the region. When we can see how and where our capital is be-ing employed, it automatically puts limits on excess-ive profit-seeking,

– a reduction in capital intensity and an increase in labour intensity, which arises when the removal


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of economies of scale leads to other, medium-scale technologies becoming economically viable once more.

The trend towards regionalisation is growing partic-ularly fast with regard to food, but also to (renewable) energy production. If the people having wind farms built outside their front door are the same people who benefit from them financially, then the enthusiasm for the energy transformation rises markedly. This is why community wind farms and solar parks are so important.

Regionalisation builds identity and a new proximity between production and use. It therefore represents an important sufficiency strategy for the containment of the ecological consequences of our activity. A whole series of policy measures is available to support more intensive re-regionalisation.

Prices that tell us the ecological truth. Low energy costs are an important part of the explanation for the continuous spread of the global division of labour. The fact that it makes economic sense today to fly prawns to Morocco to be peeled, to fly in fresh flowers from Tanzania, or to eat Chilean grapes in winter is closely connected to the fact that oil and other fuels, notwithstanding higher prices today, still cost far less than they should do bearing in


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mind the ecological damage that their use entails. And many consumers find it hard to resist the temptation of the low prices offered in the discount supermarkets. That is why we need a worldwide system to raise fossil fuel prices through taxes and emissions trading – especially in the transport sector. Such measures would help to restrict the global division of labour to those sectors where it can add value without ecological exploitation. In other areas, they would encourage a greater regionalisation of production. Stricter labour standards and stricter monitoring of them in developing countries would not only improve social conditions there but would also contribute to regionalisa-tion.

True, energy prices would also change our holiday behaviour. If the prices for long-haul travel reflected its ecological cost, then local holidays, finding your rest and recuperation in your own immediate surroundings, would play a bigger role again. At the same time, the possibilit-ies opened up by new media technologies offer us entirely new forms of both real and virtual participation in the go-ings-on in the world. Being a citizen of the world today is far less dependent on actual physical travel than it used to be. Instead, new lifestyles are emerging that combine a strong regional attachment with global awareness. The most impressive example of this is the Transition Towns movement: a closely-linked global network movement that


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now numbers several thousand Transition Towns, defining themselves as sharing a common commitment to regional embeddedness and sourcing.

Local money. Global taxation of fossil transport fuels is a form of sufficiency policy that requires international co-ordination. The introduction of local currencies points in a very different direction, one which also strengthens the local economy. Such a currency is valid only in one specific region. It can be used to pay for products and services from that region. This not only encourages local production and consumption, it also takes away the basis for any form of speculation or complex financial products. Money reverts to being a medium of exchange, an enabling instrument for the regional trade in goods.

This kind of currency has now been introduced in many places around the world. A number of policy meas-ures can be used to support local currencies, for example reducing banking bureaucracy that can obstruct their in-troduction.

Regionalisation and sufficiency work hand in hand in many ‘sharing economy’ initiatives, because the exchange and lending out of goods depends on trust – and that is created most easily within a region.

Re-balancing globalisation and regionalisation is an important starting-point towards the Good Life.


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Less clutter – decluttering and the politics of less

In the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, ‘clutter’ is defined as ‘a confused collection; crowded confusion; lit-ter’. We have numerous other words for clutter, most of them – junk, rubbish, hodgepodge – slightly derogatory, though there are some with more positive connotations, such as ‘odds and ends’ or ‘bits and pieces’.

Clutter seems to be everywhere, though it has a par-ticular predilection for attics, basements and garages; it is also found on bookshelves, and in wardrobes, kit-chens and workshops. For large-scale decluttering, for example house clearances, there are specialised profes-sional companies; for individuals, there are countless ‘how-to’ books offering advice on decluttering your mind and your life (entering ‘declutter’ into the Amazon UK books search box brings up 1,807 results). There are training courses on how to throw things away and profes-sional one-to-one coaching from specialists in orderliness. Television shows in which collectors of junk are liberated from their suffocating piles of rubbish are riding high in the ratings.

The desire to be free of this ballast seems to be very pressing and very considerable. We are not concerned here with how the individual can get rid of it all, but with the question of whether sufficiency policy can do anything to prevent the accumulation of clutter.


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The most important starting-point for ‘decluttering’ policies is not to allow clutter to develop in the first place. This is where sufficiency strategies can help to prevent clutter.

Pointing consumers in the right direction. Everything that tells consumers whether what they are about to buy is a durable and useful commodity or soon-to-be junk is helpful. Useful measures in this respect range from labels providing in-formation on the durability and repairability of products, to the introduction of deposit and return systems so that valuable raw materials – for example in discarded mobile phones – are not left lying around in our homes, to con-sumer advice services that include alongside advice on new purchases advice on alternatives such as non-purchase or buying second-hand or co-ownership, and to public pro-curement that prioritises quality and thus offers a model for consumption oriented towards durability.

Promoting an environment free from the permanent pressure

to consume. The clutter that daily surrounds us is often the result of spontaneous and impulsive purchasing. Hardly have we bought it, or used it once, than we regret it – and it is consigned to its destiny of uselessness in the wardrobe or the box room. What can help here is to shape our im-mediate environment so that it isn’t permanently sending out the message ‘buy something’. Part of this is restricting


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advertising in public spaces and on television, as well as town planning which doesn’t make ‘temples of consump-tion’ into the core of our inner cities and the only places that invite us to linger.

Measures against planned obsolescence. In recent years, a new phrase has gained currency, one that rightly set off a frisson of shock among consumers: ‘planned obsoles-cence’. This describes predetermined product breaking points that will render them obsolete, unattractive or bey-ond repair after a fixed time. It turned out that a number of producers quite deliberately accepted product obsoles-cence of this kind, or even built it in, so as to stimulate the early purchase of replacements – from light bulbs with weak filaments to kitchen appliances with unrepairable plastic components that wore out after a set time. There are a number of possible measures to prevent such produc-tion of clutter: providing consumer information, extending warranty periods for goods, even penalties for verifiable and particularly serious cases of deliberate deception of this kind – perhaps backed up by the right of consumer organisations to take class actions.

Supporting repairability and repairs. A culture in which more repair work is carried out is an important factor in extending product lifespans and reducing clutter. It can be


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promoted through a number of measures. Of great import-ance in this context is an ecological tax reform that would make depletion of environmental resources more expens-ive and at the same time make work cheaper (by reducing non-wage labour costs), because labour-intensive repair work would then become economically viable once more compared with the material and energy intensive alternat-ive of new production.

In addition, it is possible to provide support to fa-cilities, initiatives and enterprises that repair things, or that provide skills, tools or spare parts for repair work, or that give away or sell cheaply things that have been used and repaired. It is helpful if the local council or com-munity can provide at low cost a space for setting up a repair cafe.

Prioritising recycling for re-use. Recycling in the sense of the re-use of an item following its initial use, whether for the same purpose or a different purpose, is much more sus-tainable than the breaking down and recycling of the raw materials of an item for a new use. The following measures are possible for the promotion of re-use:

– tax rules that support the production or use of re-usable parts,

– education in manual and craft skills, – local authority or community spaces where these


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skills can be practised and developed (e.g. community Do-It-Yourself workshops),

– the organisation of municipal bulky waste collec-tion in a way that enables re-use by private indi-viduals or selling on for re-use. In Bremen, the city’s construction materials exchange performs just such a function. Its aim is to maximise the proportion of building materials reclaimed from demolition and renovation projects that is re-used. Its customers include private citizens, small craft enterprises, de-molition companies, construction companies, archi-tects and public departments.

Clutter is not simply a problem that costs us as indi-viduals time and money. A great deal of energy and re-source materials are bound up in its production, and it takes a great deal of energy again to recycle or dispose of it. Policies that prevent clutter arising in the first place are therefore a contribution to the protection of the environ-ment.

Less market – prosperity beyond the marketplace

Commercialisation means the extension of the market and of an economic rationale into other areas of social life. ’Less market’ is about limiting this spread and pushing it


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back to protect or extend non-marketised goods, services, infrastructure and activities. For economic rationality, with its cost-benefit analyses and efficiency mindset, has expanded deep into our private lives and has hampered spontaneous, non-instrumental creative, altruistic beha-viour. Economists

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Transcript of Innen Schneidewind Leben engl.indd 1 10.07.14 16:02 · Innen_Schneidewind_Leben_engl.indd 7...